Babylon's Ashes

My least favorite entry into this series. Ultimately boring, climax was meh, some big events were extremely anti-climactic and unceremonious. I read it in a week and couldn't wait for it to be over.

My review: https://mattstein.com/books/babylons-ashes

** spoiler alert ** Did not finish, stopped reading some time in May. The series just got really boring and uninteresting after half of the humans were killed in the meteor strike attack. The most interesting part at first were the powerful interplanetary governments, but those just got destroyed so now there’s just a bunch of annoying people left. This review says it better: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

This book uses a myriad of perspectives as opposed to the handful used in previous installments. I felt that added a layer of complexity and made it really feel like events were happening system-wide. With the plot for this one I think it was important to widen the scope, as such.

James S. A. Corey’s Babylon’s Ashes (2016), book six in THE EXPANSE series, is the follow up to Nemesis Games, which saw the rise of the Free Navy-a violent group of Belters in black market military ships. The Free Navy crippled Earth and begun a campaign of piracy and violence among the outer planets while colony ships from Earth and Mars were heading for the alien ring gates to explore a thousand new worlds and make a better home out in the stars. Babylon’s Ashes finds James Holden and his crew dealing with the aftermath of The Free Navy's devastating terrorist attacks on Earth that happened in Nemesis Games. The beginning is focused on picking up the scattered shards of where Nemesis Games left us. The plot of Nemesis games essentially revolves around Marco Inaros’s (leader of The Free Navy) attempts to further his plans of a multi-system utopia with him at the governmental head, and the Earth/Mars/OPA combined efforts to knock the psycho out of the ever-loving sky. James Holden and his beloved, rag-tag crew once again are called upon to reach Medina Station (which lies at the heart of the gate network) to confront Inaros and his Navy.....except, as Holden's crew mates note: "So. Martian coup. Free Navy killing the shit out of Earth. Pirates stripping down all the colony ships that were heading out. Medina Station’s gone dark. And we-don’t-know-what eating some of the ships going through the gates… One damned thing after another… When it ain’t a whole bunch of damned things at once." YEP. You heard that right...the major battle takes place near a space-portal gate thing where there is a deep alien mystery happening. Try to guess how this ends. Babylon’s Ashes is a more military sci-fi/political affair than previous entries and feels less intimate than its predecessor (not that there aren't many intimate moments here). Nemesis Games just kept us really close to our favorite crew members (they almost feel like my personal family): Holden, Naomi, Amos, and Alex. Babylon’s Ashes greatly expands the number of POVs in a mix of the familiar and the new, including but not limited to: Chrisjen Avasarala, Clarissa Mao, Bobbie Draper, Filip (son of Marcos and Naomi), Michio Pa (a captain in the Free Navy), Fred Johnson, Anderson Dawes, Salis (on Medina Station outside the gates leading to the colony planets), a family of Earth refugees, and others. Almost 20 in total. You really have to keep up with story-line of each individual character but the writing and story is engaging, it isn't hard to do. So, the story mostly revolves around political machinations in the aftermath of The Free Navy's terrorist actions, which is fine but I found this entry to be the least engaging entry so far. Perhaps the stakes just didn't feel high enough at the beginning or it lacked the mystery of some of the other books in the series or it lacked the Alien meets Blade Runner storyline of Leviathan Wakes or the Space Western vibes of Cibola Burn. I don't know. I guess political maneuvering isn't a hundred percent my thing. However, don't get me wrong, this is still a damn good story and an excellent book. It's just not my favorite in the series. Plus I wanted more of the stolen protomolecule! But all signs point to the mysterious alien monster emerging from the gates once again. Side-note: This is the book that really solidified for me that James S.A. Corey is writing sci-fi that directly parallels some of the concerns/problems of our age such as terrorism (The Free Navy/OPA), refugees crises (Earth and Mars fleeing to the newly discovered worlds after having their homes destroyed), populist ideologies (The Free Navy), racism (exhibited in the Earth's view of Belters), etc.

Another worthy entry in my favorite SF series. I confess I put off reading this for a bit. The last book in the series ended with some Dire Events. With the political situation and other stuff going on right now, I really didn't want to read about anything dreadful happening to characters I like very much. But I made it through, and everything was (more or less) ok. This time we're still dealing with the people who set the Dire Events of the last book in motion. One thing this series does that I like is pull people from previous books in to have small or large roles. It's like they're real people with read effects on the world. Their stories don't stop just because we don't see them for a while. That's kinda cool. We don't see a lot of the Rocinante crew this time, mostly just James Holden. Alex the pilot gets to have a good time. Amos and Bobbie Draper and Clarissa Mao are mostly lurking in the background. But there's lots of action and adventure. You'd be forgiven if this book felt like the end of the series. I think they're contracted to write 3 or 4 more. It'll be interesting to see where the authors take the story from here. There are a couple of ways I can see it going, but I'm happy to be surprised. As a side note: so far, I'm pretty impressed by the way the first novel has been adapted into The Expanse series on SyFy. It doesn't contain all the details of the story, but it has enough. The compression of some story elements and the elision of others makes sense. Well done, guys!

Still captivated by the overarching story – I think some perspectives in this one were not as great as the others and sometimes made it a bit harder to follow than necessary.

It's definitely a book that had things happen. Lots of big things that felt like a prologue to future action. Hopefully the next book are going interesting places

This one really dragged in the middle, but the end definitely delivered!

It was fascinating to have so many POVs and see every angle of the conflict... but it caused a little more confusion when new characters were introduced. Still love this series and need book 7 now!

Hard to remember what happened in book #5, and that made it hard to really get into this one. But still a good book and series.